From Romania to the Road — My Story Begins

By Bogdan — RoadToForge

I was born in 1986 in Romania, in a small tight knit community I’ll just call my home place. The kind of place where everybody knew everybody. Where neighbours helped neighbours. Where children played football in the streets until it was too dark to see the ball.
We had no internet. No mobile phones. No technology as the world knows it today. We were poor. But looking back we were rich in ways that money cannot buy. We ran free from morning until evening. Playing outside, swimming in the river, making our own fun. A childhood that today’s children will probably never quite know.
My home place was a mining community. Most of the men worked underground. Including my father. He spent over twenty five years in the mines — hard, physical, dangerous work — to keep his family fed and housed.
I was the fourth of five children. Above me were three older siblings. Below me was my younger sister — just two months old when our world changed forever.
My mother passed away when I was about one year and three months old. I don’t remember her. I never got the chance to know her. My aunt stepped in to help my father with raising my younger sister. That’s what communities did back then. Nobody was left to face tragedy alone.
My father raised us largely on his own for years. Working underground every single day.
He never gave up.
When I was about nine he remarried — a woman who also had two children of her own. Our house became a full house. It wasn’t always easy. But we had each other. And we had our father.
Leaving Home
I was a good student when I was young. Then at fourteen I moved away from home to attend college. Away from my father. Away from everything familiar.
I fell in with the wrong crowd. Teenagers — drinking, smoking, staying out nights. The kind of rebellious years a lot of young boys go through. Eventually I got expelled. My father stepped in and arranged for me to transfer back to a school near home. I repeated a year. I finished eventually.
At seventeen I left Romania for the first time — heading to Hungary with friends looking for work. Six months. A new country. It didn’t work out. But I learned things I couldn’t have learned anywhere else.
I came back home. And then at eighteen I moved to Holland. Looking for a better future.
Holland
Holland was a completely different world. Clean. Organised. Full of opportunity — or so it seemed.
I was young and far from home with no real guidance. I worked many different jobs along the way. But I also went down the wrong path with the wrong crowd. Made choices I’m not proud of. That’s not who I am today. I won’t go into the details — not yet anyway. Some stories take time to tell. Maybe one day.
What I will say is that at some point I looked at where my life was heading and I didn’t like what I saw. It wasn’t a gradual drift. It was a conscious decision. I knew that if I stayed on that path I would end up somewhere I didn’t want to be.
So I left. I moved to England. I started from zero. Again.
A Fresh Start
Starting over in England with nothing is not easy. And being Romanian in England during those years brought its own challenges. I faced discrimination — people who looked down on you, who underestimated you. It was frustrating. But it made me more determined.
I found a boxing gym. Structure. Purpose. My coach believed in me and gave me my first proper job.
I worked hard. I took on many different jobs over the years. But even with all of that there were still periods when I drifted. That familiar emptiness that hard work alone couldn’t fill.
Then something changed.
A Romanian boxing coach came through the doors of the gym. He was a Christian. We became friends. And through that friendship I found faith. It filled something that nothing else had reached. It changed me not just on the outside but from within.
That was the real turning point.
Building Something Real
Eventually I became a professional truck driver. I met my wife and we built a life together. We moved around, worked hard, started over more than once. Eventually we settled in Ireland where we now live with our three young children aged five, three and just ten months old.
We bought a house. We built a family. There have been hard times — financially and in other ways I may share another time. But we are still here. Still going. Still building.
Have I made it? In the worldly sense — not yet. I’m still a truck driver. Still working long hours. Still figuring things out day by day.
But in the ways that matter most — yes. I have a family I am proud of. A home we own. A faith that keeps me grounded. A sense of purpose I never had when I was young and lost.
I’m fulfilled. And I’m still on the road.
But then again — as humans we are never truly satisfied. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Maybe it’s the journey itself that matters most.
Come with me on the journey.
Why RoadToForge
The name means something real to me.
The road — because that has always been my life. Romania to Hungary. Back home. To Holland. To England. To Ireland. Always moving. Always starting over.
And forge — because everything worth having has to be forged. Shaped by hand. Built through effort, time and persistence. My father proved that going underground every single day for his family.
I’m trying to do the same. In my own way. On my own road.
This blog is about life. About ideas. About fitness and health. About innovation and technology. About lessons learned the hard way. Sometimes even politics. Whatever is on my mind — I’ll share it here honestly.
No filter. No pretending. Just honest writing from someone still very much on the journey.
This is RoadToForge. And this is just the beginning.
Come back soon. There is a lot more still to tell.
— Bogdan